Safe in His Arms
by Shadows Rain Down
Summary: Queenie seeks comfort in her Jacob's arms when nightmarish memories of her time near the front lines during the War resurface after attending the funeral to a former friend. For IWSC's sixth round. AU. Triggers for PTSD and trench warfare.


Submitted for Round 6 of The International Wizarding School Championship.

School: Durmstrang

Year: 1

Theme: Pain

Main prompt: Funeral

Optional prompts: None.

Word count: 1,542

Author's Note: AU, in that Queenie volunteered in the Ambulance Corp back in the First World War as a driver. Set between the first two movies.

* * *

**Safe in His Arms**

Most stories end with a funeral but not this one. No, we start with one.

It was not my first one, and it would not be my last either that's what being orphaned at a young age and "carelessly" going to France to drive the ambulances would get you.

Oh, I should introduce myself: my name is Queenie Goldstein. New Yorker. Flapper. Modern Witch. Legilimenes, you know like one of them mentalists that perform on stage? That's right. I can read other people's minds.

That's amazing you think?

Actually, you would be wrong there but don't beat yourself up over that. Most people think hearing, seeing, and even experiencing someone else's thoughts and whatnot would be swell. Even my own sister for a while.

However, it's something I can't just flip off like an electric light bulb or adjust the dial like on a radio; it's always on.

Nevertheless, that right there has saved both my sister and me several times, so I've learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say.

"Queenie?" He squeezes my hand, his question soft barely a whisper in the stilted air of the sunny graveyard.

"Yes," I looked up and into the caring eyes of the only man that I could ever love, Jacob Kowalski, and gently returned his hand squeeze.

'You-You're not alone.' He silently reassures me, and I smile for the first time since yesterday when I got word about Bettye's funeral.

"Thank you," I whispered back before leaving him to join my old unit at the casket. My humble bundle of scarlet poppies in hand.

The irony of marking another lost generation with the very plant that doomed a previous one was not lost. Not on me.

Then again it would take a plant with milk that turns men numb to grow on those barren, scarred fields over there. I saw a colored picture once of such a field, a field that had once been tunneled and craved up with steams of blood flowing from the collapsed trench were a grenade had exploded, now covered with red poppies.

I nodded my greeting to my old comrades in arms all four of them holding the same flowers.

"All for one," Beth began, always the one to lead.

"One for all," we all finished as we dropped and threw our poppies down upon the final resting place of our fallen comrade.

The cheer was more than fitting for you see, it had been Bettye's notion that we used it while we worked over there. A rallying cry and a promise that together we girls would shoulder through.

And we did.

"Goldstein!"

Queenie looked up from her task of rolling bandages. "Yes, Mister Jones?"

"What happened to the ceiling of your bus?"

"Oh, just some shrapnel, sir. You see I was driving when that air raid hit last night."

"I would ground you if you were not also our best night driver. It's like you're a cat."

Queenie smiled. "Thank you, sir."

"Well, yes." Jones cleared his throat. She could be quite distracting with those baby doll eyes. Too bad she was a Yank and one of those Bohemian-minded girls that demanded on wearing those outlandish trouser suits whenever she was under the bonnet or driving her ambulance. Mother and father would never approve. "Anyhow, there's a temporary break in the fighting. A perfect time to collect the wounded. You, Evans, and Vane are moving out with Johnson, Peters, and Slater."

"Yes, sir!" Queenie replied automatically as she hurriedly finished that roll of bandages before carrying the armful of freshly rolled ones into her bus.

Twilight was quickly turning into night, and Queenie knew that again she would be driving in the dark. It was too risky to operate with any headlamps, not with the ever-looming threat of more night bombings over them all.

Then she and Johnson were leading the way with Evans and Peters, and headstrong Vane and Slater following closely-well, not too closely since death from association could easily befall anyone here on the outskirts of no man's land-behind them.

Johnson was occupied in his ritual of reciting various prayers in Latin quietly to himself not aware that his partner and driver could hear his mental recitations loudly and clearly.

Queenie did not mind too much. After all, everyone seemed to need to mentally fortify themselves for whatever bloody scene awaited them at their destination.

At least, his mental exercises were not as uncomfortably lewd as Baggins's usually were. The French were indeed obsessed with love.

Before long, around nineteen minutes, they pulled to stop at the base of the hilly, barbed land.

The next several minutes were filled with determining whom of the wounded were lucky enough to be dispatched back to the field hospital first and then rushing back and forth between the smoking field and the back of the buses.

Four or five to an ambulance.

That was the harsh reality.

We'll be back for you on the next round.

Was the promise and hope they all clung too.

"We're full!" Shouted Slater as he closed the back doors and ran to the front of his bus.

Queenie nodded and slowly drove forward. Her speed slow but constant as she secretly used the charm she had crafted back last year while sneaking about the grounds of Ilvermorny. It was almost as if she was merely seeing the world through a dark glass instead of the utter blackness that swallowed them.

If only she could magically fix the rutted and broken roads with as much ease, but the Repairing Charm had its limitations as did her 'lighted vision charm.' Only a few yards in front of her could be covertly brightened for her own eyes.

"Easy does it, Goldstein," Johnson muttered as they stirred around the portion of the road that had been bombed into a small crater.

"I haven't wrecked us yet." She knew she should not have said that the moment after she did, it had that queer ring to it that screamed jinx but one that she did not the counterspell to.

Johnson crossed himself and kissed his sacred medal seven seconds before they heard it.

The sound of a shell falling from the sky towards them.

I awoke just as I am sure I felt the hot burning of the metal tore into me.

My breathing is in its own marathon with my heart as I try to determine where I was: when I was.

I was back home, Tina quietly sleeping in the bed next to me testified as much, and it was now not then. The war was over. Had been for years.

It was not yet dawn, but I had to get up. Get out of there.

I should not be surprised that I found myself dressed, standing several blocks away, and knocking on Jacob's door, and I guess I'm not really.

"Queenie? What's wrong?" Jacob asked hurriedly as he tied his robe closer to his body. His warm eyes are searching mine.

That was when I cried. Just before falling into his surprised arms and mumbling about only needing to be with him.

"Of course," he mumbled back as he guided us into his apartment and onto his sofa without breaking the hug. Like it was entirely within the norm for me to rush to him in the morning hours and demand to be held and comforted.

It wasn't, but heaven help me, I wanted it to be.

We just held each other. There wasn't any questions or looks of pitying. It was nice.

"Coffee would be good," I answered Jacob's silent question of whether he should offer to brew any for me or not. He is such a sweet man. A good man.

My man.

And, so I find myself silently yet comfortably sitting and drinking a quite bitter cup of coffee next to my boyfriend. I know I should talk about it, but I don't want to ruin this happening now.

And, his assumption that it was delayed grief from yesterday's funeral isn't too far off, not really.

I hadn't had that nightmare in years until tonight.

"A nightmare of a memory."

Jacob sighed and put down his coffee before encircling me in his warm embrace from behind.

"I worked in the ambulance corps. I was the best night driver in the unit. Magic was on my side... but I couldn't predict when bombs would fall. One night I was leading us back to a hospital when three fall out of nowhere." I took a long drink of my coffee before sinking back into Jacob's comforting warmth. "I wasn't directly hit, but it did slam into an ambulance that was following me... it was hideous. We stopped and helped, but it was hopeless even with me making a nearby water main burst to put out the flames... That's when Pamela Vane got those awful burn scars, but she was lucky."

"War is hell," Jacob muttered softly before tightening his hold on me. "Pardon my language, but it's true."

I laughed. "Yes, war is hell."

We fall back into comfortable silence then as the horizon begins to lighten. Neither wants to mention it, but we both know that another war, one where non-magicals and wizards will be fighting one another, is approaching.

But, not today.

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A/N 2: A late entry. But one that still wouldn't have been if it hadn't been for my friend Tee. Thank you and feel better soon, okay?


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